Posted by Paul Cook on Monday, December 12, 2005 at 11:36PM :
In Reply to: sencil for tailagte posted by Doug Smith on Monday, December 12, 2005 at 4:37PM :
Back in the fifties, I had a summer job at a truck factory moving pick up truck beds into storage where they were ready to be dropped down onto the assembly line. I moved them around on large handtrucks and stood them on their front ends. Yes, I used to handle fully assembled 8' pick up beds by myself.
One of the things we did to the freshly painted beds after they came out of the paint curing ovens was to paint the raised lettering on the tailgates. White on dark colors and black on light colors.
We used a paint roller that had round plastic washers on the ends to hold the roller up so that the paint roller just touched the raised letters.
The closest thing available these days is the edging tool for painting walls. It is flat, about 4" x 4" with a raised handle on the back. The painting surface is like a coarse felt with closely spaced very short bristles. They are available at Lowes, Home Depot, and most home improvements stores.
You add paint by dipping it. Then you squeegee off the excess. Then, with almost no pressure, you wipe it across the raised letters.
The results (with a little practice) are just like the original tailgate lettering paint jobs - and as close to original as you can get. No brush strokes, no masking tape, no stencil lines.
On the production line, it took less than 30 seconds per tailgate.
Follow Ups: